I was recently interviewed at a conference, and they asked, “What one quality matters most for effective leadership?” One word rolled off my tongue - Humility! I’ve been thinking lately about the importance of Humility as a leadership competence. We normally think of Humility in terms...
One of my most enduring memories from childhood was the regular appearance of the milk man’s truck which delivered dairy products to our home circa 1964 in Staten Island, New York. Bill the milk man delivered milk in durable glass bottles which we dutifully placed...
My daughter Lena stopped by for a visit this week on her way to Los Angeles where she will help organize fittings for pilots at Delta Airlines as they release new uniforms for the first time in decades. Her visit made me think about the curious...
Little things tend to become big things in business and life. The same is true for big problems. This was evident to me a few weeks ago when Bill McKibben was a guest on my podcast The Way Forward-Regenerative Conversations...
I have spent the last two weeks helping two organizations reimagine and define their purpose while coaching another leader to define hers. One of the companies is a startup creating a disruptive innovation and the other is an established business with a long history. In...
People often ask me how I was inspired to create a life of purpose. As someone who has been writing about purpose and helping companies and their leadership find it for twenty years, I define purpose as an “aspirational reason for being that is about making...
Every employee has a purpose. It is the reason they get up in the morning and come to work and it is more than simply about compensation and status. Purpose is the engine of performance, but few leaders tap into it. In this video blog, I...
Last week I spent an amazing day at Google Headquarters in the Silicon Valley. Given their success and the fact that Fortune Magazine has named them the Best Company to work for in America eight of the last eleven years made my visit feel that...
“The soft overcomes the hard, everyone knows it but few live by it.” Lao Tzu There is an old story about a man whose horse and wagon were stuck trying to cross a small river. A philosopher came along and asked him, “Have you discovered the...
Lessons for business and life often come from unexpected places. This unexpected lesson is exactly what happened to me in Sicily when I encountered a “goat handler” standing next to a crater on Mount Etna. Janice and I spent eight days in Sicily in July,...